These Games We Play
by HHRandG
Summary: Haymitch story, Haymitch POV. What happened to him after he won the 50th Hunger Games, to his involvement with the rebellion? It starts with his struggle to avoid being the capitol puppet, what it costs him and his realization that he should do something.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N A huge thanks to Mrs. Muddlewait for the beta read. If it wasn't for her, I wouldn't**

**have the courage to publish any of these. I hope you'll like it. **

**Chapter 1**

Haymitch Abernathy was named the victor of the 50th Hunger Games. His family couldn't be happier that he came back alive. He just recently transferred to Victor's Village, a place where his family was the sole occupants. The first District 12 victor had died a few years ago, leaving Haymitch without a mentor when he and his fellow tributes, including Maysilee Donner, entered the games.

It had only been a week since they moved out of the Seam and into the comfortable white townhouse adorned with Victorian architecture. He was watching his sister enjoy the Capitol-made amenities and elegant china in their kitchen, where her gray clothing from the Seam looked out of place. The smile in her eyes didn't, though, the eyes that lit up brighter than the soft lighting in the room every time she discovered something new in the modernized kitchen. She was the only one who fit into in their new lives. Everything Haymitch saw in this four-walled box shouted that they do not belong here. Especially him, the Quarter Quell Victor - he wasn't at all deserving of all this.

The day after the celebration of his victory, he got an unexpected visitor. A girl, a grieving girl, whose eyes he had difficulty meeting, came, demanding stories, last words, some remembrance of his district partner, Maysilee. She wanted him to console her with memories of the time he spent with her sister. He told her nothing. He wasn't supposed to feel guilty over Maysilee' s death, , and yet here he was. She died minutes after breaking their alliance, eaten by the Capitol-created birds. He couldn't get over it. He realized that his alliance with her wasn't just part of the Games. It was deeper than he ever thought and more painful, when it ended that way, than he ever expected.

The sister never visited again. Haymitch assumed she got the message. He would never be able to talk about it. God forbid he will ever need to.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

The six months after his win was pretty uneventful, and he liked it that way. He was willing to try to move on with his life and forget about the games, and he might have succeeded if not for the Victory Tour. The day he dreaded had finally come, when he was forced to relive all the things that happened in the games, meet the families of his victims, and go back to the Capitol where it all started.

He woke up that morning with the smell of pumpkin pie on his bedside table and a note from his younger sister that said, "Enjoy the tour! Love, Indica ". He chuckled at her obliviousness but also knew that he couldn't blame her. He would not in a million years let her know how excruciating it was to be a victor. She was too happy and contented with their new life for him to bother her with his inner demons. He just hoped that it would stay that way because, for the next four years, her name would still be in the reaping.

After a quick warm shower, he climbed down the stairs and found his sister in the kitchen experimenting with a new recipe. They could now afford to buy fresh meat and other ingredients, the food she cooked was worthy of the Capitol. He knew he was going to miss her cooking during the tour. "I thought the train leaves at six?" exclaimed his sister, clearly surprised that he got out of his room so early.

"Yeah! But I want to bond with my little sister before I go, and make up for ignoring her these past few months," teased Haymitch. Indica smiled widely at the first declaration of his affection ever since he came back from the games.

"Did someone wake up on the right side of the bed?" She turned her back on him and continued to stir the soup she was making.

"No, your pie was to blame," said Haymitch with a hint of suppressed laughter in his voice. His sister ignored his statement.

"As for bonding, the only bonding activity I could do with you right now is here in the kitchen. Taste everything I'll cook and you'll be forgiven." She poured some soup in a bowl and handed it to Haymitch.

"Just the bonding activity I was looking for," he said, patting his stomach. He took the spoon from her and indulged in the soup she had prepared.

By three o' clock, his prep team arrived. Indica invited them in and offered them few snacks she had cooked up. Haymitch was grateful for that; he needed some time alone before he became a Capitol tool again.

By the time Haymitch was leaving for the train, his father had returned from the coal mine and his mother from the dress shop where she worked. They had never left their work in spite of all the money he got. He never asked them to. If he had the choice, he would much rather have worked in the mine himself, rather than be a coach for the Games. He thought that the luxury they had now was not something to be thoroughly enjoyed. The same cannot be said for Indica; there was a silent agreement between Haymitch and his parents to give her all the best she can have.

There were no goodbyes with his parents. They didn't need them; they understood him well enough. He hugged his sister just to reassure her that everything was fine.

Once he boarded the train, he met up with Greta. She was in charge of the tour and read him his schedule. He half listened to it and busied himself looking at the bar. The amount of alcohol neatly stacked in there was just so inviting. It is color coded, with different labels on it. Though he wouldn't be of legal age to drink until a few weeks after the victory tour, he wondered about the effect of alcohol in someone's body. He had always been curious about why a lot of people seemed really cheerful drinking it, despite of its bad smell. He missed being cheerful. He had never managed to laugh ever since his victory except that morning with his sister. He wanted to feel happy again.

He heard Greta snort something incomprehensible. Finally, she gave up and just reminded him to join in the dinner in about an hour.

He walked into his room, the same room he occupied when he was taken to the Capitol for the games. The familiarity relaxed him a bit. He picked out a shirt from his closet, laid it out on his bed and decided to take a quick shower, hoping that every tension and worry would be washed away with all the complicated shower buttons that could also devastate him.


	3. Chapter 3

He was surprised by how big District 11 was. He sat on the observation deck, looking at the farms that stretched as far as his eyes could see. The green scenery was so refreshing compared to the grayish surroundings in his district. He wondered if it was worth living here, as he thought of all the food they were producing. Greta found him there after a game of hide and seek, although Haymitch was the only one aware that they were actually playing. She instructed him to go back to his room where his stylist was waiting. The train would stop in thirty minutes.

His stylist prepared a white button up polo shirt with a dark green, almost oversized, coat. It is paired with black pants with a silky soft fabric so smooth that he almost couldn't feel them. He was waiting for a signal that the cameras were ready, so that he could completely ignore them.

He was ushered into a waiting room with Greta. The mayor - a bulky man with dark skin - was standing precisely in the middle of the District Eleven seal on the wall behind him. Standing next to him was another dark-skinned man, six feet tall, his straight dark hair seamlessly combed and so shiny that the light reflected off it. The cameras started rolling and everybody automatically put a smile on their faces as if they hadn't been made to wait so long for the victor's arrival.

The mayor took his hand and pressed it long enough for the cameras, before introducing him to the tall man behind him. That was Chaff, one of the victors of District 11, the son of the previous mayor of District 11, and a fan of Haymitch's. Haymitch wanted to punch him. How could he say that after him killing one of their own?

Haymitch gave a small speech, the guilt never leaving his chest. He wanted to run away, to escape these people. He felt that the people were giving him a look of abhorrence; he strongly intended not to look anyone in the eye. He met Chaff's eyes, though, which were full of pride and admiration. It made him want to puke.

The Victory tour took longer than he imagined. The Capitol was the nastiest part. He'd thought nothing could be worse than the way everybody hailed him and every female thought his snobby attitude was endearing. Then he had his first meeting with President Snow. The harsh reality of being a Hunger Games Victor blew up on him without warning, once he heard about the past victors' responsibility to keep the Capitol entertained, mostly in physical ways. He never had any idea that it was going to be like this. Had he known, he might have chosen to die in the arena than live the life the Capitol expected of him. The worrisome part is what would happen to him if he did not submit to their demands. He decided to take the risk and refuse to be their toy. After all, he was now more dead than alive. What difference would it make?

He jumped on the train the next day and went straight to the bar. He chose the bottle with the oldest date on the label. He chugged down the liquid, ignoring the bitter taste. He had already finished half of it before he felt lightheaded and had an urge to puke. To restrain himself from throwing up, he needed a distraction. He found one when he spotted Greta in the drawing room, busy with her note taking by the window.

"Oh look, some weird looking bird was on your head, Greta." She quickly looked at him, surprised to see him holding a bottle and his face tomato red.

"Oh no, it's just your hair!" mocked Haymitch. He was laughing hysterically as Greta scowled at him.

"I don't have time for this, Haymitch. Save your jokes for when you're in your own district." Greta told him, clearly not pleased with how Haymitch was handling himself after receiving the offer from the Capitol.

"Who's joking?" he laughed, satisfied that the alcohol had decided to stay in his body. "No time? Woooooh, too busy deciding which Victor should be in your bed when you came back to the Capitol?" Haymitch accused

Greta, known to have very little patience with the Victor's temper, stood up, folded her hand on her chest while clutching the notepad, and looked foully at Haymitch, her lips twitching with irritation. "I'm not the one who made you win the games. It's your choice to be a Victor. You should be grateful that the Capitol even lets you have a choice. I mean, that is the system, and it was since before you were even born. And like it or not, you are under that system." Haymitch opened his mouth to try to argue but Greta cut him off. "And don't even get the slightest idea that you can fight it. You're just a Victor, one of the many Victors; you have no power to change it. No one has." She gave him a reproachful look before turning her back on him and leaving the room. Once the door was closed, Haymitch strongly put both of his hands on the neck of the bottle and squeezed it, imagining it was Greta's neck before throwing it at the door where Greta just exited.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four **

Haymitch went straight to his room after Greta brought him back to his house on the Victor's Village. She did not bother to have the courtesy to look for his parents and tell them that she had brought their son home, safe and sound. With his large suitcase standing beside him, he was unloading the bottles of alcohol and hastily putting them under his bed when her sister abruptly entered his room.

"How was the -" Indica stopped when she saw the bottles Haymitch was trying to hide from her.

"Heard of knocking?" Haymitch retorts,

"What are those?" she asked.

Trying to suppress his rising temper, he wanted to ask her, calmly, to get out of his room. But his sister, high tempered as he is, wouldn't give up on a fight.

"Refreshments," he caved in reluctantly.

"Don't mock me. The labels says rum, wine…What else is in there?" She tried to reach for the bottles under his bed. "It's alcohol, Haymitch" she said, enraged.

"So?" said Haymitch, trying to sound nonchalant "Everybody drinks it in the Capitol. Is it too bad for a Victor to bring home some Capitol habits?"

"Don't you try to use the 'Victor' argument on me? You know it won't work," she says infuriatingly.

"Well, now, it needs to. I am a Victor and I will do what I want without anyone dictating how I should live my life." Haymitch said, deciding to finally show his anger not only with his sister but also with the Capitol. Maybe it'd be better if his sister were angry with him, so that it would be less painful to lose him if ever the Capitol were to do something about his hardheadedness.

Astonished with Haymitch's cruelty, Indica left his room without saying another word.

Haymitch's drunkenness had become visible to the rest of the household. His father, the most levelheaded person he knows, once tried to talk him out of it. Her mother looked distressed every time she saw him holding a bottle and her sister hadn't talked to him since the argument. Haymitch, despite the nagging conscience at the back of his head, grew comfortable with the way his family treated him. Nobody bothered him; he could just ignore them and he couldn't be more thankful for that.

Five months passed, and he was growing anxious; his life seemed so quiet despite the Capitol's threat. Maybe the Capitol had forgotten about him. Maybe they thought that nobody would really want him anyway so they were leaving him alone. He thought that until the day of the reaping.

The thought of his sister's name being called in the reaping crept into his head from time to time but he made himself ignore it. There was no way that a girl with just three names over a thousand will be called.

Now that he was a mentor, he was was seated in one of the three special seats above the platform, facing hundreds of young, worried boys and girls trying to wish that someone else, anyone else would be called instead. He tried to look for his sister in the crowd, just to give her a thumbs-up telling her not to worry, because the chance of her name being picked was very slim. He'd even sobered up for this day to deliver the message more credibly.

A lady, not Greta, entered from backstage. She had hot pink hair that looked like more of a bundled thin cotton than actual hair and ridiculous shoes with platforms and four-inch heels. . Greta had probably been promoted to a more decent district after his win.

The ceremony started with the usual Panem National Anthem and a video presentation reminding everyone over again how the Hunger Games started. The lady with pink hair introduced herself as Refalia, and began sifting through the bowl of district twelve names. She stepped to the microphone to announce the girl tribute. Haymitch felt as if her voice echoed through the forest as she announced the name. "Indica Abernathy."

Haymitch felt paralyzed as he heard the name repeated in his head. His brain didn't want to cooperate, but more than ever, he needed to think what he should do. He scanned the crowd to look for his sister but his eyes fell on the bowl of names on the left side of the platform. There must be a mistake. It was not right at all. It was more than the impossible. Unconsciously, he stood up and took the piece of paper Refalia had had in her hand, the one with his sister's supposed name it, and read it again. It really was her name. The mistake wasn't in the reading; it must be in the bowl. Maybe the Capitol had put his sister's name on a hundred pieces of paper – or all of them. Haymitch rushed to the left side of the platform to prove his theory. Before he even touched the bowl, a Peacekeeper was pulling his hands together behind his back. He struggled to get free, but the peacekeeper was too quick to push him on the platform, face downward.

"It's a fraud!" he shouts, "All the papers in there had my sister's name. It's my sister's name written on all of them!. It's a fraud! It's a fraud!" He continued to shout until one of the Peacekeeper slammed his head on the edge of the platform. The last voice he heard was Refalia cheerfully saying "Who would have done that? Well, probably by anyone who really wants to be in the Hunger Games, right?" Then he completely passed out.


	5. Chapter 5

A/N I forgot to thank my beta Mrs. Muddlewait for her great work in this story. Thank you. Thank you.

**Chapter Five **

He woke up in an unfamiliar room. He was sure though that he was in a train taking him to the Capitol by looking at the tiny lights outside of his window disappearing so fast. He touched his aching head and felt the cloth wrapped around his temples. He started to remember what happened and quickly rose to bed only to suffer from a severe dizziness that made him fall back on the pillow. He felt an urge to cry but his eyes did not allow the tears to drop. The voice of Greta kept rewinding in his head, saying "You're just a Victor". The lottery of names was beyond his control because he was just a victor; he couldn't even fight with a peacekeeper because he was just a victor. It occurred to Haymitch that the word "Victor" in Panem is synonymous with a "puppet". The drama of having the victor's sister fight in the arena was just the puppet show the Capitol citizens needed to be entertained. A show plotted by the Capitol and acted by the puppets. The difference was that there were no scripts provided, just real life reaction, just a desire to prove that the puppets are very able to entertain its audience. In this predicament, he must do something to increase the drama, to satisfy the Capitol and its citizens, so that they would not look for additional show the puppets must provide them.

He defied the Capitol because of principle. Why should he succumb, particularly now that they made his sister pay? Right there, he decided that he and Indica would fight. He couldn't care less about the system, about the audience, about the show the Capitol wanted him to be part of, and he would bring his sister out of the arena alive.

As if on cue, his sister knocked on the door and asked if he is already awake. He told her to come in, surprised that she was on her feet and not crying to death. Her eyes still as green as ever, do not even have a tiniest hint of tears. She sat on the edge of his bed and stared at him for a long time while him, getting uncomfortable, bent his head down. He felt guilty for bringing her in this situation. He wondered what if he did give in to what the Capitol wants. Would the Capitol still take a hold of his family?

"You looked like a crazy retard running around on the platform earlier. Indica joked, suppressing a giggle in her voice. "After seeing you like that, I don't know if I still respect you as a games victor."

"You can't blame me. You don't even have an idea how hard I tried to sober up only to hear your name clearly being called. Not fair!" he retorts. "How I wish I'd been drunk at the time, I would have been calmer." He managed to put ona smile, only to have her frown at him.

Silence echoed in the room. Their attempt to lighten the mood obviously failed. "You can cry, you know," Haymitch suggested, though he knew that he could not comfort his sister in any way if she did. .

"On you? Oh no, I won't," Indica told him firmly. "You can promise me one thing though. Take it as a request from someone on her deathbed."

"You won't die, I promise," he cut in immediately, but Indica only continued.

"Please try to sober up until the games," she pleaded. "I don't think I can handle the memory of you always with a bottle at hand and falling and puking at every place possible."

"Well, that is the plan. I am more determined to bring you out alive than I was myself back there"

She forced a little smile, making Haymitch doubt whether she believed him. She suddenly stood up, and without looking back, a second look, continued out the door.

He woke up early that morning to meet Refalia and inquire about the schedule. Her pink hair mirrored her personality: being bubbly and pretty laid back, the exact opposite of Greta. He warmed up a bit to her. Her naïve perception of the games was a given. He thought it was forgivable enough. Anyone raised in the Capitol would inevitably be like that.

They were in the middle of the meeting when his sister and the other tribute entered the dining car and sat side by side. Extremely focused on his sister's survival, he'd completely forgotten that there was a male tribute. His name was Sitho, and he was pale and thin. He looked as if he's been starving all his life, with his cheeks so hollow and his arms looking like branch of a dead mahogany tree. Haymitch briefly hoped that a week of good Capitol would make the boy's body more fit to fight in the arena, but he quickly dismissed the thought. His sister should be his priority. There was no chance that this boy could survive the blood bath at the Cornucopia during the first minutes of the games. Nor his sister, but he ignored that last thought.

"We'll pull into the Capitol this afternoon. Since we are the farthest from the Capitol, we are the last to arrive." He was doing his best to act as a mentor to both of them, not only for his sister. "When we get there, you will be ushered immediately to the modification room. Your stylist and their prep team will make you good-looking enough for the Capitol audience. You both need that, terribly, to get sponsors." He shifted his gaze from his sister to Sitho, who was still stuff his mouth with food from the bewildering variety on his plate.

Haymitch explains what to expect: the tribute parade, the costumes, and, above all,need to awe the Capitol sponsors.

The schedule went smoothly. As expected, Haymitch's tributes had been cooperative enough with everything from the alterations to their bodies to the costumes for the parade. Their stylist was the same one District 12 had for twelve years, a woman in her mid-forties with graying hair. Haymitch thought the Capitol had just picked her up on the street and called her a stylist. Every tribute was made to wear a miner's costume every year. His sister would just have to rely on her charm to catch the sponsors' attention.

The parade started with Haymitch expecting nothing for his tributes. He thought they would have a better chance on the training center and the interview. He was in the middle of analyzing his strategy, whether to make them look weak or tough, when the chariot of District Eleven was called, revealing a familiar face three seats from him. It was Chaff. He could not be mistaken, with his hair combed in the same style as when Haymitch first met him. He was cheering his tributes on and was very proud that they'd become a crowd favorite. Haymitch remembered that Chaff was a son of the late mayor in District 11. He became a tribute not because he was reaped; he volunteered. For someone who said that he was a fan of a Hunger Games Victor and being a Victor himself, what must he expect?

Haymitch heard District Twelve's chariot being called. He didn't expect the the miner's costumes to impress anyone, but he was more positive on the waving and smiling enthusiastically. But apparently, it didn't work either. Being the last district had advantages and disadvantages. It sometimes made the audience feel excited for the anticipation or it could make the audience forget that there even was a twelfth district, especially if a preceding district had already caught the audience's fanatical attention. And this time it was Neth, the District 11 male tribute. The people were chanting his name until the last chariot stopped on a semi-circle behind a fountain and waited for the annual President's speech.

Hearing Neth's name over, Haymitch wondered if he could persuade him to ally with sponsors would line up for him given the crowd's reaction. It would benefit his sister to be with a sponsor's favorite. Haymitch was thankful now that he hadn't given in to the urge to punch Chaff that first time they met. Chaff was Haymitch's fan; Haymitch didn't think he'd say no to the alliance. For his male tribute, he'd have to think of another strategy, so Sitho couldn't accuse him of being biased. Even though he already knows he is.


End file.
